Today we’d like to introduce you to Dre Parker.
Hi Dre, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I was raised by a single mom in the projects of Middletown Connecticut. I started working at the age of thirteen at a local restaurant to help bring in money to help around the house. In 1995, at the age of 22 years old, I became a first generation entrepreneur and opened up a brick and mortar clothing store in the downtown area of Middletown, Connecticut. I would make three to five thousand dollars a week and even sometimes hit those numbers in one day. Without having any business and financial acumen, I slowly was running myself out of business. A few years later I had to call it quits due to the lack of business and financial management combined with the stress of being a new father and running a business. I sold the business and moved down to Atlanta with my Aunt Pam to get a fresh start at life. I ended up working a job, but eventually found my way back to entrepreneurship. The good thing about finding that job was that I found the love of my life there, my lovely wife Lashonda Parker. Through lots of trials and tribulations of being a business owner, a husband, and a young father to three wonderful children, my late twenties to mid thirties were very challenging. Being in a major hub and historic black economic center for black entrepreneurs, the two major cheat codes I had were the examples of success and proximity. My circles and my life began to change once I started associating myself with other successful black entrepreneurs and coaches. This put me on a journey to what I call ultimate success within the four cornerstones of faith, family, fitness, and finance. I found similar stories of people like me, starting and failing at business along with having challenges in other areas of their life. I decided to become a Financial Advisor and a Money Legacy & Life Coach to help people not make the same financial mistakes I made when I was younger. Over the past decade I’ve been helping people design, grow, and protect their money and legacy so that they can live an extraordinary life. I’ve written several books and developed different life and business coaching programs. My goal is to help people not only fix their business and financial challenges, but also help them become better in all areas of their life. The work that I do is very rewarding and fulfilling. The ultimate goal for me is to help myself and others become the best version of ourselves so that we can live well and have a wonderful human experience during this lifetime.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Being a licensed financial professional and a coach has been a bumpy ride in the beginning. Some of the main struggles starting out was not feeling qualified to help others when I had so many past failures when I was younger. If you don’t heal from your own traumas, how can you help others. As an advisor the biggest thing I teach clients now is upgrading their Money EQ (Emotional Intelligence). Starting off I had no clue that having a higher Money IQ without EQ was a recipe for failure. Teaching people the technical side of money was easy, but the behavioral science behind money challenges was the main reason why people didn’t execute. Later on I realized people didn’t have a money problem, they had a mind problem. So I had to personally work on upgrading my own Money EQ to help others in their execution of better financial success. Another challenge was wanting to help everyone in the beginning when everyone wasn’t ready to be helped. You realize as an entrepreneur in any area, when you grow personally, your business grows with you.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
THE MONEY & LEGACY TEAM FINANCIAL AGENCY
ULTIMATE GOAL:
To transform the way that people internally believe, feel, and connect with their money and legacy by helping individuals create more positive personalize experiences with it through the right education and implementation so that they can live free and happy.
LONG-TERM VISION OF AGENCY:
To create a powerful lean productive team of 100 consciously unified leaders within the financial industry to inspire communities and the world around to change the dynamics on how we handle and deal with money and legacy as a collective.
MISSION AND PURPOSE:
The mission and purpose of The Money & Legacy Team is to empower families to become more confident and consciously aware of how to become better leaders over their money and legacy. We do this through educating and helping families implement the proper investing towards asset and cashflow creation, along with the utilization and the proper protection and transfer of those assets for generational wealth.
WHAT WE DO – WHO WE SERVE – AND HOW WE DO IT:
We help individuals design, grow, and protect their money and legacy while living an extraordinary life. We serve communities that are ready for financial change. We do this through mass marketing of educational concepts to influence and inspire people to take action.
VALUES AND PRINCIPLES IN ACTION THAT DRIVE OUR BUSINESS:
Values: Integrity, compassion, continuous improvement through self-awareness, consistent work and effort, and love.
Value: Integrity
Principle in Action: We act in integrity when dealing with prospects, clients, business partners, strategic partners, vendors, or any other person in and outside of our business structure. We discuss and do the tough things that personally scare us individually, even when it doesn’t feel good so that we can move towards the progression of what is best for the whole organization.
Value: Compassion
Principle in Action: We act in concern for people who are suffering financially and offer ways to help them when they are ready to receive the help. We do NOT emotionally put ourselves in a lower vibrational state because of a person or group’s choice to live or continue to live in poverty. Compassion is NOT personally taking on the energy of the person who chooses to suffer because we know that suffering is a choice.
Value: Continuous Improvement Through Self-Awareness
Principle in Action: Continuous improve through self-awareness is being aware of where we are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually when dealing with ourselves in connection to our business’s goals and success. Continuous improvement only happens when we look at ourselves objectively to discover what needs to happen in order for us to become a better leader over our family and business. This principle in action means challenging our own confirmation bias, limiting beliefs, thinking, and emotional state each day while running our business.
Value: Consistent Work & Effort
Principle in Action: We believe in consistent work and effort towards our goal. We DO NOT believe that working hard leads to success. There are a lot of hard-working people in the world that never succeed in reaching their desires. This principle in action means we are practicing mindfulness and taking inspired action each day towards the progression of our business goals. Consistency means putting in focused effort every day in achieving what we believe to be important in our business. We also believe in working in harmony with all of life so that we are constantly striving to stay in balance.
Value: Love
Principle in Action: We are love which allows us to run our business out of love and to service our clients, shareholders, business partners, vendors, people within and outside of our organization out of love. Service is not sacrifice. It is sharing from one’s inner completeness and joy of running their business. Love is not pride. Love vibrates higher than pride. Pride is defensive and vulnerable because it depends on external conditions to thrive. Pride is weak because it can be knocked off its pedestal back into Shame. We run our business out of love. This principle in action means that we open our hearts whenever we open our doors to our business each day. This is done by being emotionally intelligent and self-aware.
OUR STRENGTHS AND ADVANTAGES WE HAVE IN OUR BUSINESS
The advantages of The Money & Legacy Team are that we focus on the psychology and emotions around money and legacy so that we can connect our clients to a deeper purpose for implementing their financial plan. We have the advantage of working with top FMO’s and back offices that support our agency for licensing, contracting, and training our team. We also have strategic partnerships outside of the financial industry. The Money & Legacy Team is a team of financial professionals, real estate professionals, CPA’s, Attorney’s, Investors, Mentors, and Coaches.
What sets us apart is we teach the higher laws of money and the missing pieces of legacy through our Infinite Legacy Blueprint™️. This is what sets us apart from other financial professionals. I am most proud of the overall mission we have to help people develop and focus on their inner wealth and fulfillment over chasing external wealth.
SERVICES WE OFFER:
Life Insurance Planning
Long-Term Care/Disability
Critical & Chronic Illness
Infinite Banking Concept
Your Family Bank Strategy
Tactical Asset Allocation
Retirement Planning
401k/403b/IRA Set Up
Investment Advisory Services
Estate & Entrusted Planning
Financial Professional Training
Holistic Financial Planning
Life Coaching
PSYCH-K® Facilitation (Core Belief Restructuring)
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Risk taking is a very important part of life. Many people refuse to take risk because of their fear of failing. What they fail to realize is that on your path to success you will have an accumulation of different failures along the way. If you know in your heart you want to do something and it’s meaningful to you, failure won’t stop you. When your calling finds you, you will spend ever day of your life looking to fulfill the mission. I tell people what’s the point at arriving at death safely? Take some risk for the things you believe in and would like to accomplish while you are alive because one day you will die so you have nothing to lose. I have taken plenty of risk, but the biggest one I have taken was when I quit my job in 2011 and went all in on the things that drives me and makes me happy. Many times we have crutches in life that keeps us from running full speed ahead towards our dreams. I’m not saying a job is bad because it’s not, but every person has to make the choice one day to go all in or stay doing things “half ass” playing it safe for their whole life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.workwithdreparker.com
- Instagram: @moneylegacylife
- Facebook: @moneylegacylife
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andre-parker-entrepreneur/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@moneylegacylifecoach
Image Credits
Presise Halley
